Transport authorities launched a full-fledged investigation Sunday into the derailment of a bullet train on the Akita Shinkansen Line in Daisen, Akita Prefecture, on Saturday afternoon.
It's a dangerous, unpredictable world. Twice in January Chinese warships in the East China Sea challenged Japan's Maritime Self Defense Forces patrols in a manner deemed threatening. And on Feb. 12 came North Korea's nuclear test.
Here's an open secret: Japanese men have a bad international reputation on the romance front.
SELLING WOMEN: Prostitution, Markets and the Household in Early Modern Japan, by Amy Stanley. University of California Press, 2012, 282 pp., $49.95 (hardcover) In the vast cultural landscape, Japan fascinates the mainstream with manga and anime, the martial arts, Zen and kimono. Of course, ...
Kenta Maeda shook off worries about his form with five shutout innings as Japan beat China 5-2 in first-round Pool A of the World Baseball Classic on Sunday at Fukuoka Dome. Japan improved to 2-0 following a tough win over Brazil in Saturday evening’s ...
In an unusual action that quickly sparked debate online, Chinese authorities showed a live broadcast Friday of four foreign drug smugglers in their last hours before execution for killing 13 fishermen. A shocking and apparently unprecedented form of reality TV for China, the program ...
The Liberal Democratic Party-led government appears reluctant to disclose the criteria under which it chose to execute three men Thursday, the first hangings since Prime Minister Shinzo Abe took power in December. Some observers speculate that two of them were picked out of the ...
Three death-row inmates are hanged, in Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka, the first executions carried out under the new Liberal Democratic Party-led government.
Hiroto Oyama frequently dreams about his mother floating on the surface of water and his father standing on the gallows. “I wake up by my own shouting voice,” the 24-year-old Oyama said. His father, Kiyotaka Oyama, 51, was convicted of killing his wife (Hiroto ...
A 44-year-old man serving a life sentence in a prison in the Chugoku region believes that continuing to live a respectable life is the only atonement he can make for the families of the two people he killed. The inmate, who has now served ...
First in a series on hangings In the execution chamber, a red lamp near the ceiling lights up, the chief detention officer gives the signal and five guards each press a button, one of which triggers the trapdoor of the gallows. No one will ...
Recalling her son’s funeral, the mother of executed killer Yukinori Matsuda said he appeared to be at peace in his coffin surrounded by flowers. “You couldn’t see your mother’s face before you died,” she had said to the body. The funeral for Matsuda, 39, ...
Jerry Givens executed 62 people. His routine and conviction never wavered. He’d shave the person’s head, lay his hand on the bald pate and ask for God’s forgiveness for the condemned. Then, he would strap the person into Virginia’s electric chair. Givens was the ...
Nine films from Japan and abroad that explore the theme of capital punishment will be screened consecutively at a theater in Tokyo’s Shibuya district over a one-week period starting Saturday, accompanied by a series of talks. The movies to be shown at Eurospace for ...
